Some questions about the comunity...

Yesterday I was talking to a alumn of mine about the grasshopper comunity openness. He told me that first years in other digital comunities (cg comunities) was the same: all people sharing, everyone that wants to learn, he could. But some years ago the CG business got bigger and people paid a lot for good renderings. That point was the one that broke the sharing thing: knoledge was equal to money, then knoledge was not shared anymore in that way.

I was thinking a lot about that, because like teacher I like the way people talk here and share everything he could (some guys not, but allways there is a "black sheep", like we say in spanish) and this thing makes comunity a really awesome place to learn and share. Of course, now, we could see, that comunity have some not told rules: if a guy doesn't investigate, doesn't put his time trying to solve his problem and only wants the easy solution, then, normally there is no answer to him. And this is good, comunity control naturally the bad use of resources and effort of everyone here.

Are we going to get static, boring, money makers, anytime, using this comunity for share cool images and videos but always thinking that our knoledge is our money, and not sharing to not create "rivalry", making a closed comunity?

My english is really crappy, but I'm trying to open the conversation about where we want to drive the comunity and parametric modelling with grasshopper knoledge sharing thing. Will my childrens be abble to learn GH (if they wants) with a alive comunity that put knoledge over money?

I'm enjoying this and I don't want that GH comunity gets into other Evermotion star system forum. We are lucky people and that could continues in future...I think.

I hope not to offense anyone here, only putting thinking outside.

Best Regards.

Ángel Linares García.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by kleerkoat on May 13, 2011 at 1:20pm

my 2 pennies, I happen to fall into one of the categories of I know very little about scripting within Rhino or any programming, Grasshopper has allowed me to do things that I couldn't have done because of this.

I've been using Rhino since V2 and have used just about every other modeling/drafting program out there to some degree. I'll always choose Rhino over any other product because of the community and the support by the developers.

Somethings I have come straight out and said, I have no idea how to start this, would someone mind getting me going in the right track, usually the response back is a completed answer without me having to do anything. Do I go back over and see how they did it, most certainly, and I thank them profusely for their help. So I love the community for that, and I think for the most part those that are in the know, and can whip these things I'd like to do so fast, I hope that they don't consider me a leech. Do I leech definitions that people post in their threads, hell yeah, I have a folder collected from posts with about 1,000 definitions dating back since the beginning of Grasshopper.

How else is a person like me working a 9-5 job, that doesn't require me to use Grasshopper, but does Rhino, going to learn anything if I didn't get help from the gracious community. But on the flip side, how is someone like me going to "pull their own weight" when in this position? Most of the help I can give is basic stuff and not that exciting. I check the newsgroup and the forum here constantly, maybe too much for my boss's liking, but when I see a freshly posted question that I actually can help with I jump on that like a rabid dog, because there's just not that many opportunities for me to give back to the community. Does that make sense?

So to those that are so open with their definitions and their knowledge, I can't thank you enough for the help you've given me!

To get back on track, I think the original posters concerns are valid, but I wouldn't be too concerned about it. The McNeel "family" started the company based on support and customer referrals, so the community they have following them are open to sharing ideas, scripts, plugins, or other things they have created out of a need for themselves but then realize that the community might benefit so, "What the hell, I'll throw it out there for others to use."

There are some plugin developers for Rhino that have gone commercial with their private scripts that grew into a plugin they made, that then turned into a product to sell, but you can tell who is out there to just get a little bit of compensation for their hard work, like Don Lewis and Jarek. They had a need for something, wrote the plugins for themselves, thought the community might benefit and they are asking for pennies in return. I see nothing wrong with that.

When it comes to down to it, the community that follows McNeel quickly weeds out those that are in here to make a quick buck. So I wouldn't be to concerned.

There is a really good interview with Bob that goes over the company's philosophy and it is spot on with keeping things open and community driven. That's why so many people are so passionate about Rhino and all the other products. I'll try and find it and post it here.

Caffeine rant over, sorry.

ryan

Permalink Reply by Shawn Fernandez on May 13, 2011 at 2:45pm

I think you hit the nail on the head here, Ryan. This place is really driven by the philosophy and hard work of the creators of Rhino and Grasshopper. Being an open project as it is with such access to its creators and the type of users that it has, I'm certainly not worried.